Susan Wittig Albert is the author of the new novel Someone Always Nearby, which is based on the lives of artist Georgia O'Keeffe and her assistant, Maria Chabot. Albert's many other books include the novel A Wilder Rose.
Q: Why did you decide to write a novel based on the lives of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her assistant, Maria Chabot?
A: For me, Georgia O’Keeffe has always been an inspiration: an extraordinarily talented woman achieving in a man’s world, in an era when “art” was unfriendly to women. I’ve admired her painting since the 1970s, read the biographies and other critical work as they came out in the 1980s and 90s, and the letters she exchanged with her husband.
When my husband and I bought a house in the mountains south of Taos and began spending half the year there, I felt a special affinity for her.
So when I learned about the months she spent with Maria Chabot in New Mexico in the 1940s—something that was barely mentioned in the biographies—I was eager to learn about that friendship. And when their letters were published, I was first in line to get a copy of their letters.
But as I read and thought about the relationship that emerged from the letters, I was deeply troubled by the spin the editors had placed on them.
In their interpretation, Maria became such a difficult friend—jealously possessive, immaturely angry, even disruptive—that the patient and longsuffering Georgia was forced to evict her from the ranch and the Abiquiu house and forbid her to return. According to this narrative, the friendship, such as it was, ended in 1944.
The editors’ storyline (explicit in the introduction and in many notes throughout) made no sense to me on first reading, and it made even less sense as I dug deeper into the rich trove of materials by and about these two women.
Bottom line: I wrote Someone Always Nearby in order to discover for myself what kind of friend Maria Chabot was to Georgia O’Keeffe during the years (1941-1949) they lived and worked together, why O’Keeffe found it difficult to sustain that friendship and others, and how this difficulty led to the challenging situation in which the artist found herself at the end of her life.
To borrow O’Keeffe’s compelling phrase, I wrote this novel “to make the unknown known,” first to myself and then to readers.
Q: Can you say more about the dynamic between the two women?
A: The relationship I saw in the letters and wanted to picture in the novel was a mutual meeting of needs—until it wasn’t. In the novel (and I think also in life), the two women need each other for very different reasons.
O’Keeffe desperately needs someone who will devote herself to taking care of her in the remote corner of the desert where she has chosen to live and work for half the year: someone to manage the house and the household help, do the shopping, manage the painting expeditions—in general, make the place livable so she can focus all her attention on painting. She is willing to pay for this devoted service, but as little as possible.
She’s hurting and terribly vulnerable because of her husband’s cruel public adultery, and tied to him because he established and maintains her place in the art world.
She isn’t comfortable with any emotional attachment or able to make herself vulnerable to another. She needs someone always nearby, but not too close.
Maria, on the other hand, is an uncertain young woman, vulnerable after leaving (but not quite ending) an eight-year intimate relationship with an older woman artist in nearby Santa Fe. She needs to devote herself to a strong woman whom she can respect as a mentor, teacher, and above all, friend.
It’s been hard for her to find a purpose in her life: she wants to write, but that’s a kind of formless desire, not formed and compelling enough to give her a purpose. She’s eager to do Georgia’s work for little pay.
She’s uncertain about her future, her desires, her competence. She wants what we all want from an important relationship: a mutual warmth, support, openness. She is increasingly disappointed in O’Keeffe’s unwillingness to be emotionally available.
The two women negotiate their relationship over the course of a difficult wartime decade that is professionally and financially profitable for O’Keeffe and—in a different way--for Maria.
Of the two women, Maria is much more able to learn from the relationship and to be changed by it: she becomes more confident in her abilities and desires, more competent in what she can do, clearer about what she wants, and better able to make her way in the world as an independent woman.
Georgia, in contrast, is still the same remote, disconnected, and needy woman that she was in the beginning, and confronted by the challenges of aging. When she is in her 80s, blind and desperately needing both physical help and emotional support, she finds herself compelled to open herself to someone else—to a young man who, she is persuaded, is a reincarnation of her long-dead husband.
Q: This novel is part of your Hidden Women series--how does Maria Chabot compare with the other women you’ve written about?
A: The real women in these biographical [novels] all stand in the shadow of another, more powerful person. But each, in a different way, helps to create or support that person’s growing power.
In A Wilder Rose, a daughter (Rose Wilder Lane) creates her mother (Laura Ingalls Wilder) by urging her to write the story of her pioneer childhood, by rewriting that work to make it publishable, and by getting it published—during the difficult early years of the Depression.
In Loving Eleanor, journalist Lorena Hickok urges Eleanor Roosevelt to make the best of her bewildering life as First Lady, giving her the unconditional love she needs and has never been able to find.
In The General’s Women, Kay Summersby (as one of Eisenhower’s generals observed) helped Ike win the war.
None of these relationships is permanent: Rose is estranged from her mother, Hick has to give way to Eleanor’s other passions, and Kay has to surrender to the demand of Ike’s peacetime political life.
But Rose, Hick, and Kay all learn from their time in the shadow and each becomes more sure of who she is and what she wants. And each is able to stand, independently, outside that shadow.
Like the other women, Maria creates a life for O’Keeffe in a difficult time, helping her to achieve her goals for the years they are together. Like the others, the relationship ends but Maria has become independent, more self-assured, and less needful.
Q: Can you tell us about your experiences in the publishing world, both on the traditional and indie sides?
A: I’m nearing retirement (at least, that’s what I tell myself), so this is a long story. Short version: In 1985, I left my 15-year academic career for commercial writing, beginning as a for-hire writer for packaging houses that produced young adult novels (Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley Twins, and the like).
I moved to adult mystery in the early 1990s and was lucky enough (takes luck, no matter how good you are) to snare a contract with Prime Crime, an imprint of Berkley Books, a Penguin imprint.
During my nearly 25 years at Berkley, I produced 40-plus titles. You can see them on the Mysteries tab at www.susanalbert.com. I might have stayed longer, but when I wrote A Wilder Rose in 2011 (the first book in what would become the Hidden Women series), my editor couldn’t publish it in her mystery imprint.
I didn’t have any luck with other houses, so in 2012, I launched my own imprint, Persevero Press. Persevero--I persevere—is named in honor of the persistent and brave women I write about.
Of course, publishing a book is a team project. However you manage the tasks, it takes an editor, a copyeditor, a book designer/layout editor, a cover artist, a printer, a distributor, and a publicist. I’ve been my own editor and publicist, but I’ve assembled a small team that gets the book ready for press (copyedit, design/layout, cover).
I work with Greenleaf Book Group, which prints, warehouses, and distributes the hardcovers to bookstores and libraries. I use Ingram and Amazon for print-on-demand paperbacks and Dreamscape for audio.
Since Rose, I’ve published 17 books via Persevero. The next one, Forget Me Never, comes out in June. It is the 29th (and likely the last) book in the China Bayles series.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m in my mid-80s and while I’m not ready to retire, it’s time I stepped away from year-long projects. I’ve moved to Substack, where I publish four essay-length columns a month, plus short stories—spinoffs from the series.
I love the direct contact with readers, the opportunity to dig a little deeper into topics I’m curious about, and the challenge of joining a new writing/reading community and learning a new platform. Substack is a special place.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment